John Stivers – Affordable

Video Transcript:

Affordability is actually an adjective that’s generally used to describe the price of something that we’re thinking about buying or selling. And it bands or stretches across a large range, from something that’s cheap on one end, up to that point where it’s too expensive on the other.

Now, what affordability makes me think about is, not only that initial cost, but also the lifetime cost of items. So more than just that price, but the cost. And there’s a whole science associated with the economics of that full lifetime cost; life cycle analysis. And so those associated costs, often times unknown to us when we initially purchase something, are things that we now are starting to look at in a broader context. And when you think that in my lifetime the population of our earth has doubled, that relationship between first time cost or price and that ongoing cost are getting closer and closer, so the consequences of those associated costs come home to roost a lot quicker.